I never did any instances at the lower levels.  Why?  Because I am not very social with complete strangers.   I didn’t even join a guild untill I was level 70.

The first instance I pug’d was Uldaman and believe you me, it was not fun.  I figured it was one of the higher level instance (this was before BC) and people knew what they were doing. I thought I was gunna be the noob and I was fine with that.  We had thee paladins, which is fine because the can do healz, tank and dps.  I looked at my buff and went ‘Oh.  We only have 1 pally aura.  I guess I will change mine.’  I did… we still had one.  I said something but I guess no one cared because it didn’t change anything.  Once inside the instance we hit a fork in the road and two people went one way and two went the other.  I was left standing there going WTF?  Soon enough then ended the suffering though.  The tank decided this wasn’t the instance he wanted to do and left.  (YAY!)

Now fast foward to yesterday.  (I know that seems a little odd)  Random guy send me a tell.  ‘Can you heal for Kara?’  Now I have only ever been to half of Karazhan but I can heal Naxx just fine so I said sure.  When we finaly got the whole group together and get to the door.  ‘Do we still need the key?’  /facepalm  I’m glad someone thought of this BEFORE we got all the way here.  Luckly I did have the key (and the only one with it).  I walk in and it says “This is a saved instance. Are you sure you want to be here?” or what ever it says.  Timer is ticking down and i ask “Why are we saved?”  Timer is still ticking: 3… 2… 1… I figure I did not say yes, save me and it would kick me out.  Nope.  “You are now saved to this instance.”  WTF? What kind of default is that?  OH then someone answeres. ”I did this yesterday. We have to go out, give someone else leader and reset”… /facepalmx2  You can not reset a raid.  Luckly they had only got a quarter way through.  Thats all in the first three minutes.  We spent 2 hours in here.

The tank was not a very good tank.  As a tank there are two things you have to worry about.  Keep threat and get healed.  If anyone is or knows a pally tank, what skill do they use to pull a group of mobs? … … Go ahead ill wait… … Ok. We use shield chuck because it hits more than one target and is one of the only ranged skill we get.  Unless you are this tank, then you apparently use 1.3second cast time exorcism… which hits one…  Whatever, I can deal with that.  Now, how does a tank get healed?  Fairly easy, just stand there.  Unless you are running around and like to hide behind pillars and corners.  Yeah, don’t start a fight then break LoS with the healer.  You have a tendancy to end up dead that way.  Even through all of this we still got to the last boss.  You wanna guess what the problem was?  The fight briefing went something like this. 
“Tank: Stand in the corner, back to the wall. Only move if you have to get away from a golem.  DPS: Dont stand in golem fire.  WHEN he enfeebles (your player will darken) RUN AWAY!  Healz & Ranged: Stay here and watch out for fire.”
Fight went like this.  Tank pulls. Stands in corner. Prince Enfeebles. One dps runs away. Shadow nova. 6 of 10 people dead… Tank starts running prince ALL OVER the room. Healz yell at tank to quit moving. Prince enranges. Wipe.

I have the best luck with PUGs! </sarcasm>
Thankfully the WoLK heroic pugs seem to be working out alot better then my usual pugs do.

My current TV and internet provider displays messages on my TV whenever there is a severe weather warning, along with that really annoying emergency broadcast signal. You know the one–the sound you only ever hear “as a test”? Sunday night, a tornado warning for the county popped up.

So, if you happen to live in a larger county, a normal reaction to this might be to check the local TV station to see if you’re anywhere near the tornado. You might check the radar online, to see where the worst of the storms are. You might even peek out the window to see if the sky is green yet.

Or, if you’re home alone in the middle of Kara, your first ever raid, you say “Screw it,” grab the laptop, thank god for wireless internet, and hide in your bathroom (the most secure spot in your apartment) while you finish the raid.

In my defense, we were in the middle of a boss fight! We were steamrolling everything, since half the group was 80 and the other half were low 70’s, but I’ll be damned if I miss out on a rare chance to see some old content.

I ended up having tons of fun, and getting a rather useless stack of Badges of Justice. I didn’t hit Outland for the first time until after 3.1, so I have only seen a small handful of regular 5 man instances from Burning Crusade. I’d like to eventually see more…at least I made it through Kara this time!

Raid group not motivated? Want to get them going after an AFK break, but threatening them with playing the Shade of Aran Chant isn’t working? Do as I do, and begin telling them a certain story – guaranteed to get those raiders going if it’s the second telling or later…

Once, there was a little green man, who had a little green horse.

The little green man with the little green horse very much wanted to marry a princess in a far away land.

So, the little green man got on his little green horse and set off to see the princess in the far away land.

After a little way, the little green man on the little green horse came across a guard tower.

The guards walked up to the little green man on the little green horse and spoke to him.

“Who are you and where are you going?” asked the guards.

“I am the little green man on a little green horse and I am on my way to see the princess of the far away land”, came the reply.

“Alright then”, said the guards to the little green man, and they let him past.

The little green man on the little green horse carried on towards the far away kingdom.

Eventually he came to the castle.

Some guards stopped him.

“Who are you, and where are you going?” asked the guards.

“I am the little green man on a little green horse and I am on my way to see the princess of this castle of the far away land”, came the reply.

“Alright then”, said the guards to the little green man, and they let him past.

The little green man on the little green horse carried on towards the top of the castle of the far away kingdom.

In the castle was the king of the castle of the far away kingdom.

“Who are you, and what do you want?” asked the king.

“I am the little green man on a little green horse and I wish to marry the princess of this castle of this far away kingdom”, came the reply.

“Okay”, said the king, “You may marry her if you slay the dragon and bring me its head.”

“Very well”, said the little green man, and he got on his little green horse and set off to find the dragon.

Along the way to find the dragon, the little green man on the little green horse came upon a guard tower.

“Who are you, and where are you going?” asked the guards.

“I am the little green man on a little green horse and I am on my way to kill the dragon so that I may marry the princess of the far away land”, came the reply.

“Alright then”, said the guards to the little green man, and they let him past.

The little green man on the little green horse carried on towards the dragon.

Eventually the little green man on the little green horse came to the dragon’s lair.

“Who are you, and what do you want?” asked the dragon.

“I am the little green man on a little green horse and I am to slay you”, came the reply.

And the little green man got off the little green horse and killed the dragon.

Then the little green man chopped off the dragon’s head for proof and got back onto his little green horse and set back off for the castle of the far away land.

Along the way to the castle he came across a guard tower.

“Who are you, and where are you going?” asked the guards.

“I am the little green man on a little green horse and I am on my way to the far away castle of the far away land to marry the princess”, came the reply.

“Alright then”, said the guards to the little green man, and they let him past.

The little green man on the little green horse carried on towards the far away castle of the far away land with the dragon’s head.

Eventually he arrived at the castle and was stopped by some guards.

“Who are you, and where are you going?” asked the guards.

“I am the little green man on a little green horse and I have killed the dragon so that I may marry the princess of this far away land”, came the reply.

“Alright then”, said the guards to the little green man, and they let him past.

The little green man on the little green horse carried on and came to the king.

“Who are you and what do you want?” asked the king.

“Who are you, and where are you going?” asked the guards.

“I am the little green man on a little green horse and I have killed the dragon so that I may marry the princess of this castle”, came the reply.

“I have changed my mind”, said the king.

“Oh, okay”, said the little green man sadly.

And the little green man on the little green horse set off home again.

—

Right, I’m going to stop there because it’s boring into my mind just writing about it, but trust me, I once started the first sentence while my guild was slacking at the start of Karazhan and boy did we go for Attumen after that. You can continue and include his journey home if you wish, when telling the story yourself – of course, he meets inquisitive guards and such.

Completely aside from today’s post, yes, I’m very proud that I discovered how to use page breaks to hide some of the story on the front page, which saves a lot of space and hence shows more posts, and I’d also like to make a mention of the fact that my guild finished Naxxramas (Mirtai included)! There’ll be an upcoming post about that, so more later.

Vel.

The instance group was short a gnome on Saturday night, so while we were all sitting outside the Halls of Stone, that was obviously not going to be our destination as a four person group.

Original Target - Halls of Stone

The four of us were:

76 Warrior – Earlthecat
78 Priest – Skronk
78 Mage – Ula
78 Paladin – Vikund

And we needed something to do.

For a short term solution we decided to head back to the Caverns of Time and hit the heroic version of opening of the Dark Portal.  We did the regular version a few weeks back and figured we could handle the heroic version with this group.

Fortunately there is a portal from Dalaran to the Caverns of Time, so we were able to get from Ulduar to the instance pretty quickly.

Earl picked up the quests and away we went.  Again, another week without a delay getting an instance.  Very nice.

The routine was the same as before, and since Earl had done Violet Hold with us it was easy to explain what was going to happen.

Zip, bang, an 18 portal round and we had the achievement, Earl getting a double, both the regular and the heroic.

This time we were ready for the orcs to stream through the portal.  Last time we were ready to light them up.  This time we just waved.

Orcs through the portal

I then demonstrated to Earl that there wasn’t any going through the portal for us.  If you try to follow the orcs back through the portal, you just end up on the ground on the other side.

Nothing around back for us

And that wrapped up that for us, leaving ample time for other adventures.

So we thought about what we ought to try next.

We had talked about Zul’Aman previously, there being a quest as part of it that yields a 20 slot bag.  We could all go for that.  So Ula opened a portal to Ironforge for the four of us, then we flew off to the Ghostlands to hit Zul’Aman.

Once there we picked up the quest for the bag and headed in.

There we found an NPC named Harrison Jones.  I had just run into him in Grizzly Hills with my hunter the other day so was a bit surprised to see him.  WoW does have its share of recurring characters.

We spoke to Harrison and he lead us over to a gong that he explained would open the inner doors to the instance if only he could get at least five people to help him sound it.

Five people.  If only.

Harrison Jones needs help banging the gong

Well, we tried banging the gong with just the four of us in case they changed that rule, but nothing appeared to happen.  Our attempt at Zul’Aman was thwarted.

So suggestions were called for once again.  This time Karazhan came up.

A mage portal to Stormwind, a flight to Darkshire, and then a ride through Deadwind Pass got us to the gates of Karazhan.

Which were locked.

Locked!

Well, a quick look through WoW Wiki indicated that getting the key to the place was a little more involved than we were expecting.

That wasn’t going to fly.

Again we began discussing options.  What could we do that was fun, interesting, new (for us, at least), and would possibly grant an achievement?

The perfect idea came up.  A plan was hatched.  Another mage portal was opened.  We were heading off for something different.

But I’ve got nothing else on tap for this week, so you’ll have to wait until tomorrow to see what it is.

Y’en a-t-il encore pour qui Karazhan évoque quelque-chose ? Pour moi, cette instance de raid est… comment dire, mythique.

J’ai pris pour habitude de donner à tous mes rerolls leur accès personnel à Karazhan, j’ai toujours trouvé un peu “nul” d’aller raider là-bas et d’être obligé de s’en faire ouvrir le portail d’accès par un collègue, ralentissant ainsi toute l’équipe (et ça, c’est depuis que l’accès à Karazhan fût permis au level 68, bouh !). Aujourd’hui, comme j’ai toujours des projets de solotage ou de duotage là-bas, et même si l’accès ne nécessite plus aucune clef (re-bouh !) c’est donc au tour de mon Paladin de s’y frotter.

Voici donc, pour les nostalgiques, la procédure à suivre pour obtenir cette fameuse, précieuse, clef de Karazhan :

1. Devant la tour, un des mages donne deux quêtes à réaliser sur place.
2. De retour auprès du mage en question pour rendre les quêtes, il nous envoie voir Cédric au cratère de Dalaran.
3. Cédric nous renvoie voir Kadghar à Shattrath.
4. Kadghar nous demande d’aller chercher le premier fragment de la clef de Karazhan dans le Labyrinthe des Ombres (Outreterre, Auchindoun).
5. Le Labyrinthe des Ombres : solotage prévu (1er fragment). Retour auprès de Kadghar.
6. Kadghar nous envoie chercher les second et troisième fragments de la clef de Karazhan.
7. Caveau de la Vapeur : récupération du second fragment (en solo, pas de boss à down).
8. Arcatraz : récupération du troisième fragment (en duo, toujours pas de boss mais un passage délicat).
9. Retour auprès de Kadghar qui nous parle cette fois d’aller voir Medhiv lui-même dans le passé pour qu’il enchante la clef complétée. Malheureusement, pour accéder à Medhiv (GT2), on doit d’abord aller libérer Thrall dans les Contreforts de Hautebrande d’Antan (GT1).
10. Les Grottes du Temps 1 : solotage (mais oui aller, accès GT2).
11. Les Grottes du temps 2 : duotage (clef de Karazhan terminée).
12. Retour à Shattrath, Kadghar nous donne la clef du Maître. Youhou !

À bientôt ^^

There’s just something about an over-the-top display of brutality that makes me all gushy on the inside.

I never got to do the attunement to Onyxia. Never got to see her before the nerf.

I’m actually a little sad that everything has been nerfed so hard and/or removed so I can never experience those quest chains or epic battles.

Anyway, a group of 4 of us wandered into Ony’s Lair for shits and giggles.

I’m sure that fight was intense back in the day.

We killed her without breaking a sweat.

“Overkill” comes to mind…

She dropped a bunch of old-school goodies that we joked about. 18 slot bag! No way! And then we rolled for the head.

100!

I can’t roll like that for real loot. WTF?

Into my bag the head goes.

Got me a little head

Start the quest.

Accomplished the impossible?

Now I’m almost feeling guilty about how insanely easy she was to drop.

Off to show my trophy to Thrall, my Warchief. My panzer tank Warchief.

I’m thinking of redecorating my living room to match Thrall’s throne room. It has a warm, rustic charm to it. And fire. I like fire.

Apparently Thrall’s a little jumpy these days. Thankfully he noticed that the rest of the huge-ass dragon was not attached. Things might have gotten messy. And if he crushed my dragon head I would be rather put out. I don’t vandalize his trophies.

OMG! I’m going to be honored by the Warchief! Who is talking in third person…

You heard the man, I have a public awaiting me.

/me drags dragon head back down to the Valley of Strength

Um… I’ve been gazing. I have to watch the stupid thing while I’m dragging it around or I’m likely to trip on it.

And I thought it would be appropriate for me to be riding one of my wolves while turning in this quest. If I had the “of Orgrimmar” title I would have had that on too. Get a theme going.

So I choose my reward and wait for the celebration of my glorious victory to begin.

And wait.

And wait.

Double-check my bags. Yep, head is gone, quest reward is here.

And wait.

Chat with some friends that came into Org to watch the festivities.

And wait.

Finally start to open a ticket, this is absurd. I’ve been waiting over 5 minutes for this head to get piked.

And BAM!

But wait!

Still no head.

And wait.

And wait.

And BAM!

At long last, the lightning cracks down and everyone is Org (below level 70) is blessed with the Rallying Cry of the Dragon Slayer. You’re welcome.

We picked up a fifth person and also wandered into Kara (my first time there as well.) Picked up the recipes for Mongoose and Sunfire. Woot!

The opera was the Wizard of Oz one, I got the Wicked Witch’s Hat. I’m sure that hat was leet 10 levels ago…

Popped off to ZG. Fished up Gahz’ranka for an achievement and finished out the raid. I had killed all the sub-bosses before, but we had been unable to kill Hakkar the one time my guild went there.

I did eventually get the Orgrimmar title, but then it looks like I lost my name.

Who am I again?

Taking a break from bringing Tumunzahar up in levels, I found myself taking Siori into Karazhan yesterday. At level 80, the place doesn’t have a tonne to offer. However, I like the place and she’s an Enchanter to boot. There was some disappointment, though, when I discovered there were three other Enchanters in the raid.

Short story long, we whomped Moroes and he dropped the Mongoose Recipe. Opportunity knocked, and I rolled a 16. Not only did I not win, I came in last. Real smooth.

If that weren’t enough, Surefooted dropped from three straight mobs. I lost all three. Yes, that means I was the only Enchanter on the run who didn’t get it. To make the sting sweeter, Terestian Illhoof dropped Soulfrost when he fell. The Priest who won Mongoose took it, too.

So, 0-for-5 on the recipes. Yes, I was tickled pink at this point. Imagine my surprise when Shade handed out Sunfire. Imagine the real surprise when I actually won it! I had to check my inventory just to be sure. I was nice to everyone and congratulated people as we went along. It really was a fun, laid back (albeit inexperienced in many cases) group. At the same time, I wish I had faired out better.

I’ve been tanking for the better part of half a decade now.  While I mainly played my warlock throughout the original World of Warcraft, I also leveled a protection warrior as my alt, helping to tank Molten Core for my friend’s guild.  This eventually became my main character in the Burning Crusade, and I tanked all of Karazhan, Gruul’s Lair, Magtheridon, and parts of Tempest Keep and Serpentshrine Caverns.

What I’ve come to learn through all of this is that skill is definitely greater than gear.  I can name numerous people who used their guild to gain exceptional tanking gear only to fail at tanking because they did not possess the experience or skill to be an effective tank.

The overall amount of situational awareness that you need as a tank is much greater than that of people in DPS roles and usually more than that of people in healing roles.  To be able to be aware of when aggro is being lost, while keeping track of your own health as well as boss positioning and other distractions the enemy can throw at you (stuff on the ground that you’re supposed to get out of), takes a tremendous amount of vision and concentration. On top of that, there is the pressure coming from responsibility.  It’s no surprise that great tanks are usually the ones leading the raids.  The tank needs to be able to take the pressure of knowing that one false move could essentially fail the attempt.  The pressure of leading the raid is basically icing on top of the proverbial cake.  This is all in addition to the fact that the tank has the best idea of what’s going on during attempts because of their need to be completely aware.

So yeah, skill is better than gear.  Experience and knowledge outweighs shiny purples.  But there is a point when it won’t matter.  What?  Did I just say that skill doesn’t matter at a certain point?

Yup, I did.  And I think I’m at that point.  I am fortunate enough to be in a guild that is currently raiding 25 man Ulduar and we’re pretty successful at it.  We should be hitting Mimiron tomorrow to get in some attempts and should hopefully try General Vezax by next week.  Unfortunately, I joined under the assumption that I would be raiding Naxxaramus.  I could not attend raids for the two weeks after I joined and lost any raiding priority I would’ve gained by attending.  So another week or two goes by, and then the 3.1 patch hits.  Being a pretty strong raiding guild, Naxx is no longer a priority.

So, stuck in my mismatching levels of gear, I proceeded to raid.  I could see why my GM was hesitant to bring me along for Ulduar.  A glance at my gear shows that I have only 1/3 of my gear from 25 mans, while the rest are a mix of 10 man, heroic, and crafted gear.  I still have no pieces of 7.5 tier gear in my tanking set.  And as a prior post indicated, I still haven’t gotten any loots from raids, which means I’m tanking for bosses such as Thorim, Freya, and Kologarn in gear that shouldn’t be letting me live for more than 5 seconds.

And yet skill, experience, and knowing how to customize what gear I have has allowed me to be a very useful part of the raid up to this point.  But around Thorim is when I realized that my gear won’t cut it anymore.  The longest I lasted on tanking Thorim himself (after the main tank was killed) was about 9 seconds, and that was with the burning of all my cooldowns as he would get off about 9 attacks in 6-7 seconds.  He was hitting me for about 19-22k health, and my health pool was at a little over 38k fully raid buffed.  If I got hit twice in a row without something close to a full heal between them, I was down for the count.

I guess this was more of a ranting analysis than anything else.  Skill is definitely better than gear… but if the boss can kill you in one or two hits, skill really doesn’t matter anymore.

Wish me luck in gearing up a bit over the next week!

-V

So last night, around 5pm, the 5 core members of my guild, yes I said 5, all gathered together for our  first ever run as a group. We decided to head into……

Karazhan!!

Yes, you read that right. While every other guild out there is in Ulduar and Naxx, our small group has made its  first official guild run of Kara. The group was myself, Daxan, playing healer, hubby was tank, and we had a 71 mage, 80 ret pally, and an 80 shadow priest.

We pretty much blew through everything. We struggled a little bit on the R&J fight, but we got through it much better then when we only had 3 people. This was the 2nd showing of R&J for us…lets hope next time we get something else.

The only bosses to give us issue were Illhoof, and Netherspite. Netherspite requires more than 5 ppl. So he will always be  skipped. Illhoof caused issue  because out shadow priest does not put out enough burst damage and we needed that to down the chains. We made it all the way to the Chess Event, which is TONS of fun BTW, before we called it a night. Our plan is to head back in tonight, and down Prince, and get the achievment.

All in all, it was great fun. The mage is a fresh 70, so he got a few gear upgrades, including a piece of his tier gear. This should make his leveling a bit easier. I managed to pick up the enchanting recipe from Shade as well. Everything else was De’d by myself and the other enchanter. Still hoping for the mount, but otherwise, its fun to get together as a group, and “see” content, even if that content is 10 levels below us.

Next on our “to do” list…Gruuls!

Yep, totally. We went last night, took Ulduar by the throat, and stomped it flat.

It wasn’t an easy fight, by any streach of the imagination. The first pull in fact wiped all of our raiders multiple times. Here’s a killshot for the first boss:

Did I say that was OUR kill shot? No, that’s the Loading Screen boss killing us!

However, in the face of adversity we persevered!

Some of us made it past the infamous Loading Screen boss to be greeted with the Instanced Locked boss. I got to run around the (empty) staging area for the gauntlet and Flame Leviathan and get the lay of the land!

Eventually the Instance Locked boss let me go and, after a quick disconnect, I was ported back to my hearthstone area.

Not wanting to push our luck some of us went to go play in Karazhan. Shortly after (FINALLY!) getting my tier-4 glove token from curator (we’ll have to see tonight if I’ve still got it), we found Ulduar’s weakness.

Actually, we found everything’s weakness.

That’s right folks! We brought down the server! Woo! Go <Unemployed>!

Now where’s our phat lewt?

/snicker

We’ll be giving raiding one more shot tonight (raid nights are Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, remember) and hopefully, if problems still persist, we’ll be able to enjoy a fresh start next week.

Some Feral notes:

Savage Defense makes us look like we’re dancing, always jumping up on our stubby little bear back-legs. Even with the armor and stamina nerfs though it feels quite overpowered. Tuesday I ran heroic Violet Hold with some guildies and our healer actually asked me to put my DPS gear back on because he was getting bored. (I accidentally ran in DPS gear up until just after the first boss) I’m going to have to reserve judgement about how I feel about SD until I can actually tank something in Ulduar. While it might be crazy OP for heroics, it might be just right for T8 content.

The new swipe is fun, but it’s not exactly un-targeted.

If you’ve got the rage and you stand there with nothing targeted, you can’t swipe. If you stand there with rage and have an enemy targeted and swipe then you’re good to go. It’s more accurate to say that it’s un-ranged. The effect is still the same and the utility of it is amazing (I still don’t think the 360º aspect was needed).

I’ve already got ideas for who will tank what when we get to Ignis.

ALSO:

I don’t know who the guenius behind this was, I just wish I had been clever enough to think of it on my own.

New Tauren Cat-Form, who's with me?

And still, familiarity breeds contempt.

Let’s look at some of the points that have been sticking in my craw.

Upon release of The Burning Crusade, once level 70 had been achieved, raiders were presented with:

• Karazhan : Tier 4, 10-man raid, 9.5 bosses, 2 events, Plenty of interesting trash (CC & tactics required), Located in the Old World
• Gruul’s Lair : Tier 4, 25-man raid, 2 bosses, Minimal interesting trash (tactics required), Located in Outland
• Magtheridon’s Lair : Tier 4, 25-man raid, 1 boss, Minimal trash (not much tactics or CC required), Located in Outland
• Serpentshrine Cavern : Tier 5, 25-man raid, 6 bosses, Robust trash requiring both CC and tactics, Located in Outland
• Tempest Keep : Tier 5, 25-man raid, 4 bosses, Moderate trash with CC and tactics required, Located in Outland

Totals for raid content on BC release:

• Number of Raid Instances: 5
• Number of Tiers: 2
• Number of Bosses: 24 (9 ‘pure’ bosses in kara, spider & chess=1 boss, opera=1 boss)
• Difficulty (interest & quantity) of trash: Moderate-high (Highs and lows in each instance)
• Location appeal: All but one located in Outland, Karazhan being in Old World was a nice touch.

Now, let’s take a look at the Wrath release. Hard modes with different loot will be treated as additional bosses. Because of the extra work for balancing, 10-man raid bosses will count as 1/2 of a boss and will not count as a full extra boss because no new artwork (models, textures, animations, scenery) needed to be created.

• Naxxramas : Tier 7, 10 & 25-man raid, 15 bosses in 25-man, 5.5 bosses in 10-man, Robust trash but no CC or tactics required, Located in Northrend
• Obsidian Sanctum : Tier 7, 10 & 25-man raid, 4 bosses in 25-man, 2 bosses in 10-man, Minimal trash with no CC or tactics required, Located in Northrend
• Eye of Eternity : No Tier, 10 & 25-man raid, 1 boss in 25-man, .5 boss in 10-man, No trash, Located in Northrend
• Vault of Archavon : Tier 7, 10 & 25-man raid, 1 boss in 25-man, .5 boss in 10-man, Minimal trash with no CC or tactics required, Located in Northrend

Totals for raid content on Wrath Release

• Number of Raid Instances: 4
• Number of Tiers: 1
• Number of Bosses: 28.5
• Difficulty (Interest & quantity) of trash: Low (Lots of trash in Naxxramas, but no CC or tactics required)
• Location Appeal: All instances located in Northrend

Now, I realise that a number of my points are personal preference. For example, I believe that being forced to go back to the old world to get to raid content is a good thing. I enjoy connections throughout the world, tying everything together. I also enjoy trash that requires a brain to get through instead of the chain-pull AoE-fest that we are ‘enjoying’ in Naxxramas.

If I were to be as strict on the numbers as I would like (counting 10 and 25-man versions of bosses as one and the same) Wrath would find itself severely lacking in the number of baddies to kill.

But, just looking at the numbers, content proffered in the two expansions upon release seems to be relatively equivalent.

Why then, does it not feel that way?

First, in Wrath, we only have one tier of gear to look forward to, and it’s possible to get almost every single piece from one instance. This is either a good or a bad thing depending on how you feel about it. I’ll get to why I think it’s a bad thing a little later.

Secondly is the trash. Upon the release of 3.0, Crowd-Control died. It was no longer needed. Part of this was from Blizzard’s new paradigm shift of ‘bring the player not the class’ (25-man Razouvious and Faerlina are stark exceptions), and part of it was a conscious effort to make Naxxramas an introductory raid to help newbies get their feet wet.

Those are the reasons, but I don’t accept them as excuses.

For example. The trash in Gruul’s Lair; the entire raid had to stack on the back of some mobs there or they would get charged and wipe the raid. In the Arachnid quarter there are spiders that charge, but this is no more than an annoyance. Nobody dies, and the AoE continues.

If these big spiders hit harder when they charged, requiring that they be sheeped, or rooted (druids can do that indoors now, not that they need to) would help add interest and challenge. It would make the 20-minute achievement more difficult too. If you needed a raid that was geared enough to survive charging spiders so that DPS could be cranked through the roof in order to get through quickly, wouldn’t that make it more worthwhile?

So, back to the numbers

Wrath has more bosses, one less instance. I’m going to tell you that my issue is with variety.

But Tiger! There’s only one less instance! There’s plenty of variety!

NO, there ISN’T.

The vast majority of raiding content in Wrath is in Naxxramas. OS, EoE, and VoA are presented in similar manner to Magtheridon’s Lair and, to a lesser extent Gruul’s (Gruul’s had 2 bosses, remember). Here is your boss, kill him, loot, win.

Imagine, if you will, that BC had just dropped and only contained Karazhan, Gruul’s and Magtheridon’s Lair, and that’s it.

Hmmm, ok, in typical Tiger fashion I’ve realised that that is pretty much what just happened, and it’s not really a bad thing. The problem I’m seeing is that Ulduar will only make this problem worse! Icecrown will then be the icing on the cake that is my dissapointment with Wrath raiding.

All for want of variety.

I made a comment in Vent last night that seemed to be very well-recieved by my guild: I don’t mind banging my head against a wall, I just wish I could bang it on a different wall for a while.

Back in BC, once you progressed beyond Tier 4, if you found yourself getting roflstomped by content you could go and do the other tier of that content. Al’Ar mopping the floor with your face? Go tackle Hydross instead. Leotheras put the bliders on you? Take your tanks and go tackle Void Reaver.

I’ve said before we’re working on Sarth 3D. Our biggest problem is that, after an hour or two of wipes, when we’re getting frustrated and discouraged, there’s nothing else for us to go work on.

But Tiger, Ulduar will have more hard modes! More variety!

How many of those bosses will you need to kill to get to ther bosses? If one boss’s hard mode eludes you, will you have the option to go work on another and come back, or will that chance be lost to you for a whole week?

I think that is a fatal flaw in what appears to be Blizzard’s single-instance tier paradigm. The ability to go bang your head against a different wall is missing.

And that’s why I’m frustrated.

PS – WTB Pally & DK tanks.

No, really, come say hi, please.

I should have known something was wrong when I first saw the cinematic trailer for Wrath of the Lich King.  My first response: “Where the hell is the catch phrase?”  My second response: “There was not enough epic dragon roaring.”  It’s not that I hate how much talking the Lich King’s dad (the narrator) does, but damn!  Where is my “YOU ARE NOT PREPARED!“?

But it was okay, I let it go.  I let myself get excited for the expansion.  I went to the local mall for the midnight opening and even had a funny moment singing numetal in the car on the way back around 1am.  Installed the expansion.  Played a little that night.  Wasn’t really impressed with Howling Fjord, but I just accepted that as stemming from my dislike of forest-y zones in WoW.

It’s been a few months now and I still don’t like this expansion, especially when I compare it with The Burning Crusade.  First let me say a couple things that I like about the playing now, so I don’t sound like a complete psycho bitch:

1. Reputation grinding is less painful now with the Tabard system.

2. Heroics are easily pug-able and they are the correct difficulty.  There was nothing more irritating in TBC than the fact that you needed Karazhan+ gear in order to run heroics.  The rewards in WotLK heroics adequately prepare players for the first tier of raiding.

3. The phasing stuff allows for more interesting questing and more inclusion of lore.

Okay now that I sound fair and balanced (haha), let me complain about what sucks:

1. There are not enough aliens.  I love aliens and demons and I remember being totally amazed by new models in TBC like those weird ravagers.  A slightly reworked model of a wolf I saw in Silverpine Forest?  Not so impressive.

2. The zones all look the same.  In WotLK you can choose between a snowy zone (Dragonblight and Storm Peaks), a foresty zone (Howling Fjord and Grizzly Hills), or an lichy zone (Zul’Drak or Icecrown).  I know a lot of people hated the transitions between zones in Outland, and I admit that it seemed a little implausible that you could go from Hellfire Peninsula to Zangarmarsh in a few short steps, but at least I wasn’t bored to death!  And just an aside: I don’t play with game music on very often, and I blame the viking soundtrack in Northrend.

3. Dalaran sucks unless you have an awesome computer.  If you have an awesome computer, Dalaran still sucks, just a little less.  Making Dalaran such a clusterfuck (for lack of a better term) was a really bad move on Blizzard’s part.  I’m not even going to complain about feeling like I’m in a more glowy Stormwind when I’m there, because I can deal with that.  But why couldn’t the game designers make the city just 1.5 or 2 times its size right now so that I’m not having to load 100 characters every time I go over there?  When I first heard about this city, I was excited because people told me that Alliance and Horde would have their own separated areas.  This could have been much more present, I feel like we are barely separated at all, which just adds to my lag.

4. The gear is ugly and repetitive.  I’ve made posts about this in the past.  It’s enough to say that there are not enough unique models for gear, especially when you’re leveling.

5. The gear reset was too soft.  I will preface this point by acknowledging that 90% of people will disagree with me on this.  I loved when I stepped into Outland and suddenly the quest greens were better than the blues and purples I had been working so hard on before.  It was fun to replace all of your stuff, even if it was very colorful and admitedly a little ugly.  The feeling of being in a new world was totally awesome.  Arco (my hunter) came into Northrend wearing a mixture of gear from Zul’Aman, Hyjal, Black Temple, and some crafted items.  I did not get to replace one piece of gear on her until level 77, if I remember correctly (I might have replaced a trinket at 75, not sure).  Even Eau (my mage), who was wearing mostly crafted and Karazhan gear, didn’t really get to replace items until 73 or 74.  I know that some people are very attached to their tier gear that they worked so hard towards, blah blah blah.  I can only agree with those sentiments if I’m staying the same area.  If I got a whole new expansion, I want gear that looks good and new and fun in the first few levels!

6. The expansion was released with too few raids.  Let’s be honest: Blizzard didn’t even make a raid for the release of WotLK, they retooled a raid (Naxxramas) they had already made for vanilla WoW.  The other raids currently in the game are only encounters (Malygos, Vault, and Sartherion).  People had Naxx on farm within the first week of the expansion.  Within a month, less hardcore players were pugging both 10 and 25-man Naxx.  I was in a 25-man Naxx pug last night that had no trouble downing any of the bosses, even though many of the players were there for the first time.  I am not complaining about Naxx being too easy – Kara was frustrating and broke up a lot of the more casual guilds in early TBC that couldn’t get past Moroes or Curator – I’m just saying that, if Naxx is going to be this easy, there needs to be something else to move on to.  I know that Ulduar is coming out soon, and it’ll be interesting to see how well they tool the difficulty and gear jump.  A lot of people that aren’t in raiding guilds have been pugging Naxx 25-man and will (in theory) be geared for Ulduar.  Are we expecting to see a lot of Ulduar pugs too?  If so, is Blizzard coming out with new content soon after Ulduar?  I feel like they could have delayed the release of this expansion a few months and included a more fleshed out raiding environment.  In TBC, we started off the expansion with Karazhan, Gruul’s Lair, Magtheridon’s Lair, Serpentshrine Cavern, and Tempest Keep -  and people weren’t even progressing past Kara and Gruul’s that quickly!  Blizzard needed to realize that by making the entry-level raiding easier, they would need more content.

7. The achievement system is an excuse to make less raiding content.  This point also requires a preface: I like individual player-based achievements.  I like doing Loremaster because it shows me quests and zones that I had skipped.  What I don’t like is that people seem to think that Blizzard’s lack of content is excusable by the large amount of achievements associated with heroics and raids.  First of all, achievements are predictable.  I was joking around today with Nick that if there had been achievements for Kara, there would have been one to kill Curator without killing any sparks, or to kill Moroes and all of this guests within 5 seconds of each other.  This doesn’t bother me that much, but it is kind of annoying.  What bothers me more is that Blizzard is trying to just recycle content and make it seem newer and more challenging by just adding some small reward, like achievement points that get you nothing but bragging rights.  They are encouraging people to do content in the most stupidly difficult way for the same gear rewards (the exception to this is Sartherion with 1, 2, or 3 drakes up).  A solution to this would be to maybe make certain raid encounters “unlock” once people have done certain achievements, but even then I wouldn’t like it because it’s just giving a new name to attunements.

8. There are too many dailies.  Again, I am not interested in doing the same unchallenging and boring content over and over again.  There were too many dailies in TBC too, so this is just a general gripe with all of WoW.  Dailies are unecessary!  There I said it!  Once you have your flight skill, you don’t really need that much gold anymore.  Blizzard added so many money sinks into this game (like super expensive mounts, pets, spells) that people are focusing more on doing some rotation of the same 50 quests in order to get a toy train set.  I already do that in real life – I save money to buy things that are actually real.  Do I need to spend hours earning and saving virtual money so that I can have a mammoth in a game?  I don’t think so.  You’d be better off not doing dailies and working a part time job in real life.  Then you can buy your own real life mammoth and pile your low level friends on it.

9. Arena rewards are too good.  I don’t know that much about Arena or PvP, but why the hell would you ever give PvPers the first frost wyrm?!  Enough said.

Karazhan, 22:21 h. Un grupo de 3 70s, un 76 y un 80 se adentra valientemente en Karazhan con la intención de matar a Attunen. En principio, tarea fácil. Pero, súbitamente, se desata la tragedia… Dicen que una imagen vale más que mil palabras:

Lean el texto del chat y fíjense en la hora (bendito Chat Mod ) Escalofriante. Que no estamos en Lamentos coño. Uno no es que sea un profesional (más bien del montón) pero hay ciertas cosas que a puro de meterle horas acabas aprendiendo.
Moraleja: nunca vayas en una raid pick-up XDDD